Opinion
Column

A crumbling legacy

The ragged blue tarpaulins flapping in the wind, weeds and wild shrubbery roundabout, that indicate where the CN station on Montreal Street has fallen into ruin, are a sad remnant of a railway age when train travel was the people's choice, when crowds stood on station platforms waiting for the train to round the bend and offload visiting relatives and returning veterans of war.

We’re approaching another critical moment in the death throes of the CN Station on Montreal Street. To put it in a historical perspective, let’s call it the Grand Trunk Station. It was in 1856 that the Grand Trunk Railway Company, a British firm, constructed this once-handsome and sturdy building of high-quality limestone with mansard roof shingled with slate.

For reasons of economy, the station was located northeast of the town. Over the ensuing 40 years, Canadians embraced the railway era with ardour. It was the economic basis for building a nation declared in 1867 as The Dominion of Canada.

By 1890, the young country, stitched together by 17,657 miles of main lines and branch lines, remained unaware that a few years hence trucks and cars and highways would dominate the transportation scene. Even

the shipping and transportation boom brought about by the First World War could not save the railway industry from its own reckless excesses.

Between 1917 and 1923, aided and abetted by the federal government, a slew of railway companies were amalgamated into one company, The Canadian National Railway. Only the Canadian Pacific remained outside

this great and necessary rationalization.

Soon after, the CNR engaged in a tough survival battle with the CPR. Huge sums were invested in new rolling stock, passenger coaches, hotels and ocean-going ships both for passengers and freight. The period 1950 to 1970 was the heyday of CNR President Donald Gordon, “Diesel Donald,” whose job it was to get out from under the cost burden of coal and uneconomical passenger traffic.

By 1980, the passenger business was offloaded onto a new Crown corporation, VIA Rail. Almost immediately, the outer station was closed and available for alternative tenants.

The arson (?) fires of the 1990s set in motion CN’s dogged determination to get rid of the property once and for all. In 2003, the City of Kingston rejected CN’s offer of the whole property for $1. Since then the site has presented the sad sight of ragged blue tarpaulins flapping in the wind, weeds and wild shrubbery roundabout, neighbourhood kids doing mischief. The Heritage Canada Foundation listed the decaying station as one of the 10 most endangered heritage sites in Canada. Nobody cared, it seemed, least of all the politicians at City Hall whose cultural vision remains defined by the waterfront.

Meantime in Smiths Falls, by contrast, volunteer citizens were saving the Canadian Northern station from a similar fate, out of which came the very successful Eastern Ontario Railway Museum. It’s worth a visit!

In 2011, the city put the squeeze on CN under local property standards by-laws that impelled CN to hire a contractor to tear down the crumbling roof and upper walls. That was duly done, and the ball is now in the city’s court. Who is going to restore the roof and walls thus to preserve a historic building for public enlightenment and enjoyment? And who will pay for said restoration?

Not I, said the dog! Not I, said the cat! Thus, the question of liability has landed before a legal hearing, which began accepting legal arguments from the city and CN last spring, and which will resume on Oct. 10.

Hardly anybody has heard of these hearings, and nobody bothers to attend. Public ignorance seems to suit the lawyers just fine. That way, the judge need not be affected by public clamour and the adversarial process can work its will.

Let me offer some reasons why the democratic process should come into play. First and most obvious, we live in a democracy where culture and heritage count for something. Citizens of all ages should be enabled and encouraged to recall the railway age, when train travel was the people's choice, when crowds stood on station platforms waiting for the train to round the bend and offload visiting relatives and returning veterans of war.

It was a mode of travel that brought people of all classes together, unlike the car culture, which isolates people from each other and which induces personal rivalries and animosities.

Another reason relates to civic appreciation of the legacy of train travel in this city. Within the ample bosom of Greater Kingston are distinct communities: Barriefield Village and Portsmouth Village, one an appendage of the military and the other of the historic penitentiary. Residents in these “villages” understand their place in the city’s geography and have gradually evolved useful social and housing standards.

Once upon a time there was Grand Trunk Village, bounded roughly by Railway Street and Hickson Avenue. It was a community of people of modest means who worked for the railway. For the children of the Village, the city built a school in 1873. It was called the Depot School and still stands at the corner of Railway and Montreal streets.

In 1928, the City extended a water main to the station and the Village residents. Many of the houses in Grand Trunk Village are reminders of the working folks who lived there. So where does this lead us, in the current legal standoff soon to be resumed in an out-of-the-way room at the Olympic Harbour in Portsmouth Village? One hopes that the judge and legal counsel for both sides will hear from Kingstonians about the importance of the railway legacy in this town.

In an ideal outcome, both the city and CN would be reminded that each bears a burden of guilt for the sad relic on Montreal Street. Therefore each should pony up some cash and sweat to rebuild the station to minimum standards.

There’s no hurry. It took 50 years or longer to build a medieval cathedral. A body of interested citizens could engage in community fundraising. Teachers and civic boosters could develop curricula around the railway age in Kingston. A railway museum board in due course would then open the doors of the Kingston Railway Museum to local visitors and travellers off Highway 401 in need of a break from the car culture.

It’s difficult to imagine how a legal hearing operating by the customary principle of winners and losers can produce the compromises necessary to save the old station. I’m intrigued by the idea of having the Mayor of Kingston and the CN president locked in the basement of the Depot School in Grand Trunk Village without food and water as long as it takes to hammer out a deal assigning appropriate blame and responsibility for the unsightly mess on outer Montreal Street. The mea culpas would be manifold.

Instead of waiting in vain for that to happen, why not write to the Mayor and the CN president with your thoughts on the matter? Public opinion occasionally helps!